You might have thought, with all this other stuff going on, that I had forgotten about my new career as a supercriminal. Well, I hadn’t.
The great School Fair Robbery was still foremost on my mind, and my plans were slowly developing. But I needed information. Ben’s first council meeting was at lunchtime on the Monday, and the fair was on the agenda.
Don’t get this wrong. Ben knew nothing about what was going on. He was my unwitting accomplice in the crime, and I had to be careful how I wheedled the information out of him, so he wouldn’t be too suspicious when all the money went missing.
My plans so far went like this. I knew the money would be kept somewhere on the school grounds until the end of the day, during which time it would be counted and sorted. At the end of the fair, it would be taken somewhere else for safekeeping, as the banks would be shut until the following Monday.
Somehow I was going to get myself into the counting room near the end of the day, and use my power to … well … I wasn’t quite sure about that part yet, I still had to know the layout.
But my plan to get into the money room was simple. The only kids who would be allowed in would be those who were delivering the proceeds from their stalls.
So, I needed a small bucket of money. I would pretend it was from one of the stalls. I needed seed money. But now, at least, I knew where to get it.
Blocker had come to school on the Monday morning gloating about the hundred dollar note he had received for saving little Caitlin Howard’s life. In his own mind, I think, he had reinvented history and had now even started to believe he had saved her, instead of just carrying her bag home. And, somehow, he had forgotten just who had chucked the rock.
If ever there was someone who deserved to lose a hundred dollars it was Blocker Blüchner.
Phil Domane was a different person that morning, though. He had also received a hundred dollars but there was no gloating from him. Quite the opposite, in fact. He seemed unusually withdrawn. Maybe it was guilt. Rumours about the truth of what had happened had already started circulating the school by the start of second period. Interval at Glenfield spreads information faster than the Internet!
Anyway, I noticed Ben getting a couple of claps on the back as he went into English, and you couldn’t help but notice the kids staring at their shoes or turning away when Blocker pulled out his crisp new hundred dollar note and started bragging about what a hero he was.
I resolved to make that note mine before the end of the day.
Our English teacher was Miss Pepperman, naturally called Peppermint by everyone she taught. She was young and funky, only about twenty-three or so, and she seemed to get on better with us kids than she did with some of the grey old ghosts who ran the rest of the school.
I got on especially well with her as we both found the English language endlessly fascinating.
We were studying a kind of Japanese poetry called haiku. Miss Peppermint told us all about an international haiku competition on the Internet. All year nines and tens were invited to enter. Miss Peppermint was going to judge the entries from our school, and the best one from each class was going to be entered in the competition.
The winner from our class, I decided, would be me.
When the period ended, I discreetly followed Blocker, trying to stay out of his sight by keeping at least two or three other kids in between us all the time.
He met up with Phil and another of their mates, Emilio, who was handsome and Spanish and as thick as two short planks. Emilio was carrying a rugby ball.
I noticed kids avoiding Blocker or turning their backs on him. News was spreading. I wondered how long it would take to reach Johnny Howard, Caitlin’s big brother.
The three guys sat together to eat lunch, and I crept up close enough behind them to hear Emilio suggest a game of touch rugby.
‘Yeah, let’s go,’ Blocker said when he had finished his sandwich.
What about the hundred dollar note? I suggested to his brain. What about the hundred dollar note?
He stopped, as if a thought had suddenly struck him. Which it had.
Don’t want to lose it on the rugby field. Don’t want to lose it on the rugby field.
I couldn’t see his face, but his back suddenly straightened at that thought.
‘I’ll just go an’ shove my bag in the classroom,’ he said. ‘Don’t want to lose my hundred bucks, eh?’
Emilio laughed. A stupid braying laugh like a donkey. ‘Who’d be stupid enough to steal money from you, Blocker? You’d smash their brains in.’
Phil was conspicuously silent.
‘Yeah, you’re right,’ Blocker said.
Better be safe. Better be safe. Better be safe. I flashed the message as hard as I could at him.
‘Better be safe, though, eh? Back in a minute.’ With that, Blocker grabbed his bag and headed for our home room.
I skirted along the side of the building behind him, keeping out of his line of sight. Home room was ground level on B Block and it was empty. Blocker flung the door open, crashing it against the wall with a splintering sound. Why? No good reason, I guess. He just seemed to enjoy mayhem and destruction. The automatic closer pulled the door shut behind him, and I snuck up to the glass panel set into the door to watch him.
He was on the far right side of the classroom, stuffing his bag into one of the wooden cubby-holes that lined the wall.
He pulled the money out from his pocket. A brand new but, by now, slightly wrinkled hundred dollar note, red and weighty with tremendous wealth. He looked around the room for somewhere to hide it.
I ducked down as he turned towards the door.
Dare I risk another peek? No. If he happened to catch me looking in, and then the note went missing, he would do a real number on my carcass, Tupai or no Tupai.
Did my power work through walls? Did it work if I couldn’t see the person I was trying to control? I had no idea.
I tried to visualise Blocker’s ugly mug. It wasn’t hard to do. The image that was the clearest was that of him a few inches from me, pounding his fist into my face as I lay on the canvas floor of the GWF ring.
Hide the money under the drunken Buddha. Hide the money under the drunken Buddha.
The Buddha was a decoration, a remnant of a senior school ball that had somehow found its way into our classroom. It was about a metre high and made of papiermâché over a wood and wire-netting base. The expression on its face was supposed to be one of serenity and peace, but whoever had made it hadn’t done a great job, and it looked like it was drunk.
It was a great hiding place, nobody would ever think of looking there.
I rammed the thought home a couple more times. Hide the money under the drunken Buddha, hide the money under the drunken Buddha. When I heard movement, I ducked across the corridor into the toilets, closing the door silently behind me.
I heard Blocker’s footsteps and then the outside door slam violently as he left. Did he always have to slam doors?
When I was certain he was well clear, I walked calmly into the room, trying hard not to act sneaky. It was my home room. I had a right to be there. I didn’t have to creep around like some cartoon cat-burglar.
The Buddha sat on a long table that ran the length of the room near the cubby-holes. The rest of the table was filled with artwork and school projects.
I lifted the Buddha and, sure enough, there it was, the moustachioed face of Lord Rutherford. One hundred New Zealand dollars. The ill-gotten gains of Blocker Blüchner, now the loot of Super Freak.
‘Moo-ha-ha-ha,’ I chuckled an evil villain’s laugh as I pocketed the note and replaced the Buddha.
Thirty seconds later I was eating my lunch with Ben in the courtyard and nobody had seen me do anything.
‘Moo-ha-ha-ha.’